USACM and U.S. Legislation
Computing professionals sometimes find policy issues ill-defined, confusing, or irrelevant. Perhaps that is why — to date — policy participation has been limited within our community.
Eugene H. Spafford
Page 5
DEPARTMENT:
Letters to the editor
The Halting Problem in the Clear Light of Probability
"Turing's Titanic Machine?" considered Alan Turing's contributions to computability theory, concentrating on the halting problem; that is, decide whether a given program will stop or continue indefinitely. The fact that in …
CACM Staff
Pages 6-7
DEPARTMENT:
BLOG@CACM
Protecting Against Data Breaches; Living With Mistakes
Jason Hong writes about security breaches and offers a three-pronged approach. Greg Linden discusses the differences between computers and the human brain and their tolerance of errors.
Jason Hong, Greg Linden
Pages 10-11
DEPARTMENT:
CACM online
Don't Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater
Nearly every day I receive an email that includes a link to a new article related to the Open Access movement. I read every one of these articles because I want to understand the different perspectives on the issue so that I …
Scott E. Delman
Page 12
COLUMN:
News
Analyzing Medical Data
Electronic patient records contain a treasure trove of data, and researchers are using natural language processing technology to mine the structured data and free text.
Gregory Goth
Pages 13-15
Smarter Photography
Improvements in camera hardware, image processing, camera-photographer interfaces, and image viewing are advancing the state of the art in digital photography.
Gary Anthes
Pages 16-18
Data Mining Meets City Hall
Local and national governments are turning to open data to cut their costs, increase transparency and efficiency, and respond to the needs of citizens.
Leah Hoffmann
Pages 19-21
Game Changer
Judea Pearl's passionate advocacy of the importance of probability and causality helped revolutionize artificial intelligence.
Neil Savage
Pages 22-23
An Influential Theoretician
Sanjeev Arora, winner of the 2011 ACM-Infosys Award, discusses his pivotal role in theoretical computer science.
Paul Hyman
Page 24
COLUMN:
The business of software
A Measure of Control
Some limitations on measurements in software.
Phillip G. Armour
Pages 26-28
COLUMN:
Inside risks
The Cybersecurity Risk
Increased attention to cybersecurity has not resulted in improved cybersecurity.
Simson L. Garfinkel
Pages 29-32
COLUMN:
Kode Vicious
Scale Failure
Using a tool for the wrong job is OK until the day when it isn't.
George V. Neville-Neil
Pages 33-34
COLUMN:
Privacy and security
Security of the Internet and the Known Unknowns
Seeking answers to questions about Internet vulnerabilities.
Chris Hall
Pages 35-37
COLUMN:
The profession of IT
The Myth of the Elevator Pitch
Instead of pitching, listen and offer.
Peter J. Denning, Nicholas Dew
Pages 38-40
COLUMN:
Viewpoint
Why Computer Scientists Should Care About Cyber Conflict and U.S. National Security Policy
Cybersecurity and policy issues for computer scientists.
Herbert Lin
Pages 41-43
SECTION:
Practice
A Guided Tour of Data-Center Networking
A good user experience depends on predictable performance within the data-center network.
Dennis Abts, Bob Felderman
Pages 44-51
Modeling People and Places with Internet Photo Collections
Understanding the world from the sea of online photos.
David Crandall, Noah Snavely
Pages 52-60
Real-Time Computer Vision with OpenCV
Mobile computer-vision technology will soon become as ubiquitous as touch interfaces.
Kari Pulli, Anatoly Baksheev, Kirill Kornyakov, Victor Eruhimov
Pages 61-69
SECTION:
Contributed articles
Why Rumors Spread So Quickly in Social Networks
A few hubs with many connections share with many individuals with few connections.
Benjamin Doerr, Mahmoud Fouz, Tobias Friedrich
Pages 70-75
Trust Extension For Commodity Computers
A user's trust in a single device can be extended to many other devices.
Bryan Parno
Pages 76-85
SECTION:
Review articles
Data Services
Exploring the technology trends in basic, integrated, and cloud data services.
Michael J. Carey, Nicola Onose, Michalis Petropoulos
Pages 86-97
The GCT Program Toward the P vs. NP Problem
Exploring the power and potential of geometric complexity theory. View a video of Ketan D. Mulmuley's FOCS 2010 tutorial on geometric complexity theory.
Ketan D. Mulmuley
Pages 98-107
SECTION:
Research highlights
Technical Perspective: Reconstructing the Unknown, Balancing Structure and Uncertainty
The problem of estimating or reconstructing an unknown structured object from incomplete, partial, noisy measurements is a fundamental one in scientific and technological applications.
Pablo A. Parrilo
Page 110
Exact Matrix Completion via Convex Optimization
Suppose that one observes an incomplete subset of entries selected from a low-rank matrix. When is it possible to complete the matrix and recover the entries that have not been seen?
Emmanuel Candès, Benjamin Recht
Pages 111-119
Technical Perspective: The Fox and the Hedgehog
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Philosophers have used this line, attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, to capture the notion that a person can be either a generalist or a specialist …
Peter Lee
Page 120
Lightweight Modular Staging: A Pragmatic Approach to Runtime Code Generation and Compiled DSLs
Good software engineering practice demands generalization and abstraction, whereas high performance demands specialization and concretization. These goals are at odds, and compilers only rarely translate expressive high-level …
Tiark Rompf, Martin Odersky
Pages 121-130
COLUMN:
Last byte
Puzzled: Solutions and Sources
Last month (May 2012) we posted a trio of brainteasers concerning designs on square grids. Here, we offer solutions to all three. How did you do?
Peter Winkler
Page 133
Q&A: A Sure Thing
Artificial intelligence pioneer Judea Pearl discusses probability, causation, the calculus of intervention, and counterfactuals.
Leah Hoffmann
Pages 136-ff